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Learning continues on Princeton campus with summer outreach programs

Posted June 21, 2012; 10:00 a.m.

by Staff

Students of all ages and teachers from New Jersey and beyond will be engaged in a summer of learning on the Princeton campus, taking part in outreach programs on subjects ranging from computer science and plasma physics to American history and journalism.

Princeton students, faculty and staff will lead various programs designed to help elementary, secondary and college students build their academic skills and to provide cutting-edge lessons that teachers can take back to their own classrooms.

The outreach programs are part of a busy summer on campus. Princeton's Department of Athletics sponsors dozens of sports camps; the University runs a summer day camp; and the Office of Conference and Event Services works with numerous outside organizations that use campus facilities for educational programs and other activities.

The following list offers a look at some of the University's educational outreach programs taking place this summer. Deadlines for registering for this year's programs have passed, but anyone interested in participating in future programs should consult the links and contacts listed below; some programs are restricted to participants from particular schools, organizations or geographic areas. Reporters interested in covering any programs should contact University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua in the Office of Communications at mmbugua@princeton.edu or 609-258-5733.

Now in its third year, this program offers cross-disciplinary research experience in leading laboratories to science students attending colleges with limited biology research opportunities. The program is open only to non-Princeton students. Each student serves as a research assistant in the laboratory of a Princeton faculty member who serves as a mentor and research adviser. The program directors, in consultation with training faculty, match student interests to available projects. Regular meetings with the faculty mentor and members of the laboratory team provide guidance for experimental design, methods and progress. By the end of the program, students must prepare a formal written report on their research and present an oral summary. Students also are integrated with other summer students in their respective departments to share educational and social activities.

Nearly 200 graduate students and researchers representing 17 countries will come from 60 academic institutions, as well as national and international laboratories and corporations, to attend a week of lectures designed to provide the next generation of combustion researchers with a comprehensive knowledge in the technical areas of combustion theory, experimentation, computation and applications.

The program, now in its third year, is organized by the Combustion Energy Frontier Research Center at Princeton with primary sponsorship by the U.S. Department of Energy. Additional funding is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Army Research Office, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and ExxonMobil.

A collaboration with the Princeton Center for Complex Materials, this program will provide area middle school students with a chance to improve their writing skills and to learn about sustainability with hands-on science activities. Morning sessions at Bowen Hall will focus on science and sustainability. Afternoon sessions at Community House, at 58 Prospect Ave., will be devoted to writing.

Nearly 30 high school students, mostly from New Jersey high schools, and six undergraduate students from other institutions will participate in this program aimed at introducing students to advanced topics in theoretical computer science. The program is sponsored by the NSF through Princeton's Center for Computational Intractability.

This program is designed for rising college seniors with a serious interest in pursuing a Ph.D., with plans to pursue a career in teaching and research. It is intended to prepare students to be competitive applicants to research-based doctoral programs. Students may work in any of Princeton's academic departments or programs. Undergraduates who are historically underrepresented, who are from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds or who are from liberal arts colleges are especially encouraged to apply. Students conduct independent research, attend a Graduate Record Examination preparation course and an intensive research methods seminar, and complete workshops on applying to competitive graduate school programs. In addition, students receive training on preparing academic oral presentations and complete a final paper, which serves as a writing sample for the graduate school application process.

Each PSURE student receives a stipend and travel allowance, and has an opportunity to present their research at the Leadership Alliance National Symposium from July 27-29 in Hartford, Conn.

The James Madison Program is hosting four eight-day seminars for middle and high school teachers of American history. The teachers, who come from New Jersey public schools, participate in the seminar each summer for three years, covering a range of topics on American constitutional history. This year's topic is "The Secession Crisis, 1845-1876: The American Civil War and Its Aftermath." The seminars are led by scholars from around the country, including Princeton faculty. They are co-sponsored by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Association of Scholars, and are part of a nationwide effort funded by the federal Teaching American History Grant Program.

International Research Exchange Program (REACH), June-July
The Keller Center has arranged for four undergraduate students from Hong Kong and five graduate students from Germany to work in Princeton research laboratories this summer. As part of the exchange program, Princeton students will conduct research abroad, with six students at German universities and four students at the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute.

The program, developed by Princeton's Keller Center in partnership with Princeton's International Internship Program, aims to expose engineering students to international approaches to technology, research and leadership, while giving them hands-on research experience in their field of study. It is a partnership between Princeton, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute, and ConRuhr, a consortium of three universities in Germany's Ruhr region.

eLab, June-August
The Keller Center's eLab is a launch pad for student startups, a creative co-working space open — by application only — to some of Princeton's student entrepreneurs. Students will spend 10 weeks learning from innovators and investors to fine-tune their nascent startup ideas to develop them into viable and scalable ventures. At the end of the summer program, the students will participate in Demo Day, when they will share their plans with investors, inventors, experts and others from the entrepreneurial community.

The three-week intensive program for up to 25 advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students — with admission priority given to undergraduates — will consist of two related courses in analysis and geometry. Each course will include nine lectures spanning one-and-a-half weeks. Daily lectures will be complemented by review and problem sessions.

MIRTHE, the Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment Center, will host 57 undergraduate students at Princeton and its five partner institutions for nine weeks of research and education. The students will participate in original, hands-on research projects and attend short courses and lectures that explore the challenges of hardware, software and systems engineering of trace chemical sensors. The center's research could yield important new technology related to health, homeland security and especially the environment. Students also visit nearby government and industrial labs. The undergraduate students hail from 37 colleges and universities across the nation, including Princeton.

In addition to the college students, 10 high school students and three high school teachers will work in MIRTHE labs at Princeton and other universities.

The other participating MIRTHE institutions are Rice University, City College of New York, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Texas A&M University and Johns Hopkins University. The students at the sites in Maryland, Texas and New York will meet with the entire MIRTHE community in the final week for the annual MIRTHE Summer Workshop, which will be held this year from Aug. 5-10 on the campus of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

Each summer, the Department of Molecular Biology, the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Genentech Foundation provide intensive laboratory research experiences to a select group of undergraduates chosen from a nationwide pool. Each student joins a world-class research group headed by a Princeton faculty member and carries out an original research project. Participants are immersed in a culture of close collaboration with other undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty, and thereby experience first-hand what it is like to be a scientist. More than 70 percent of former participants have since pursued degrees in Ph.D., M.D. or combined M.D./Ph.D. programs.

The 2012 Department of Molecular Biology Outreach Program Summer Workshop for secondary school science teachers will consist of a two-week summer workshop for 18 teachers, where every day features a mix of laboratory projects and discussions with colleagues and Princeton faculty. The goal is to help prepare teachers to bring cutting-edge biotechnology into their classrooms.

The workshop will feature an experiment using a rainbow of fluorescent proteins from Roger Tsien's BioBridge program at the University of California-San Diego. Tsien was a co-winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

In the program, teachers also will: isolate their own DNA and perform DNA fingerprinting analyses; test snack foods for evidence of genetic modification; use bioinformatics to analyze their mitochondrial DNA; participate in lunchtime research seminars and discussions led by Princeton faculty; and develop curricula for their classrooms. The program is funded by a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The Laboratory Learning program is a supervised educational program that allows a limited number of high school students, with the support of their schools, to conduct research in Princeton laboratories. These educational research opportunities are normally limited to students who have not yet graduated from high school. This selective program is designed to offer students an opportunity to participate actively in state-of-the-art research projects, under the mentorship and supervision of a Princeton faculty member. Students selected for the program will be integrated into the daily research experience of the laboratory, participating in meetings, seminars, research discussions and other appropriate educational activities. Students interested in science competitions should discuss their interest with potential faculty mentors; the Laboratory Learning program may or may not lead to a competitive research project.

Research opportunities for high school students normally take place over a summer, though the faculty mentor will define exact terms. Stipends may be offered to participating students when funding is available to support educational outreach for high school students on the particular research project.

Princeton alumni will lead journalism workshops for 23 students who are entering their senior years of high school and come from low-income backgrounds. The students — selected from an applicant pool of approximately 225 — will practice reporting and writing articles, including covering a professional sports event, and produce a 12-page newspaper and a television documentary. They will visit The New York Times, Newsweek and CNN offices and receive advice from guest speakers from a number of major media outlets. They also will receive guidance on applying to college during the summer program and throughout the academic year. This is the 11th summer the program is being offered.

This program stems from the scientific collaboration between the Department of Physics at Princeton and the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Italy, where Princeton scientists conduct research on neutrinos and dark matter. Now in its ninth year, the program is open to students enrolled in the fourth and fifth year of high schools located in the Abruzzo region of Italy. Its sponsors include Princeton, LNGS and local Abruzzo regional organizations.

Twenty Italian students have been selected on a competitive basis. The activities in Princeton will range from physics and astrophysics courses to English language instruction. Prior to arriving in Princeton for a two-week physics program, the Gran Sasso students will be visiting and attending lectures for four days at the LNGS where scientists studied solar neutrinos and dark matter experiments.

Research Experience for Undergraduates, June 11-Aug. 10
About 18 college students from around the country will conduct research in the labs of Princeton faculty members, working on cutting-edge problems related to energy production, the environment, human health and other societal issues. Their work will be funded primarily by the NSF through major projects, including the Princeton Center for Complex Materials and NSF's Partnership for Research and Education in Materials.

Partners in Science, June-August
In collaboration with the Jersey City-based Liberty Science Center, faculty members and graduate students in the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials will serve as mentors to high school students working as researchers in their labs. The program will culminate in a symposium during which the students will present their work.

PCCM/ACS-SEED Research Experience for High School Students, June-August
Two students, both of whom previously participated in the Princeton University Materials Academy science and engineering summer program, will work with Rodney Priestley, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton, on cutting-edge materials science and chemistry-related polymer research projects. The program is funded by the NSF through the Princeton Center for Complex Materials and the American Chemical Society SEED project. Previous students from this program have been accepted at universities to major in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. The students in this program start in the Princeton University Materials Academy and advance through research experience in SEED.

Research Experience for Teachers, June-August
Two teachers from New Jersey and Pennsylvania will work in the labs of Princeton researchers to gain insight into current research. They will study new materials for alternative energy and ways to enhance materials science and engineering education in K-12 schools. In the next academic year, they will share their experiences, incorporating these concepts into their curricula.

Princeton University Materials Academy, July 12-27
Sixteen high school students from Trenton, N.J., will be on campus to interact with Princeton faculty and students and learn about materials science, nanoscience, clean energy research and sustainable homes. Among other projects, the students will work on ceramic water filters that could improve the quality of life and environmental conditions in parts of Africa.

Princeton University Materials Academy for Middle School, July 30-Aug. 10
Twelve middle school students will participate in a program that focuses on materials science. The program is dedicated to narrowing the academic achievement gap across racial and ethnic groups, and is supported by the NSF through the Princeton Center for Complex Materials and the University's Community House service organization.

Summer Program for High School Students, July 16-20
About 20 students from Middlesex High School in New Jersey will spend mornings on campus, visiting labs, hearing talks and participating in hands-on projects. Their work on materials science will serve as an introduction to a yearlong materials science and engineering course taught at their school. The program is organized by the Princeton Center for Complex Materials.

Summer School for Condensed Matter Physics, July 23-26
About 75 students, mostly graduate students, from around the world will come to Princeton to attend lectures and workshops in physics and materials science led by prominent researchers from Princeton, Johns Hopkins University, Pennsylvania State University and other institutions. The broad themes of this year's summer school are criticality and quantum computation. The program is organized by Princeton graduate students and sponsored by the Princeton Center for Complex Materials and the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science.

Teacher Minicamp, Aug. 9-10
High school and middle school teachers will learn science, technology, engineering and math curriculum modules that were developed at Northwestern University. They also will hear lectures from faculty at the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, as well as tours labs and facilities.

This new course will introduce graduate and postdoctoral students from other institutions with quantitative training in the physical sciences, mathematics, engineering or computer science to the concepts and research methodologies of modern neuroscience. The course will provide all students, whether primarily interested in theory or primarily interested in experimental analysis, with a first-hand understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the experimental methods and data underlying key concepts in cellular and systems neuroscience. Lectures and laboratory exercises will show students how to think rigorously about a central set of core issues in modern neuroscience. The capstone will be one-week, student-designed research projects integrating concepts and methodologies encountered during the initial formal lectures and laboratory exercises.

Research Experience for Undergraduates, June 11-Aug. 17
A total of 42 undergraduate students from across the country will spend 10 weeks working with PPPL scientists, participating in current research projects.

High School Research Internship, June 26-Aug. 17
This seven-week program provides a mentored research experience on independent laboratory work in plasma physics for 10 high school students from New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Plasma Camp, July 23-27
Fifteen science teachers from local middle schools, as well as high schools across the nation, will work in PPPL's Plasma Science Education Laboratory to study plasma physics and fusion energy and create new curricula based upon the workshop.

The summer stock company of young professionals and students from Princeton and other colleges offers weekly young artists' workshops for children ages 7-12 from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. on Friday afternoons. This summer's workshops are on movement and dance; improvisation; masks and characters; playwriting; lights, set, and sound; and scene and story.

The Art Museum offers a nine-week summer internship program for undergraduate and graduate students from any accredited four-year accredited university or college program. Interns have the opportunity to work in one of the following departments: curatorial, education, development, information technology, marketing, office of the registrar, publications, or retail operations. Not all departments take interns each summer, and interns are placed on the basis of their experience, academic training and departmental need. In addition to their departmental responsibilities, interns participate in a two-day orientation program during their first week and weekly lunch discussions with Museum staff. Field trips and networking opportunities with interns at other arts-related organizations are also arranged.

This intensive, three-year college preparation program supports a select group of academically gifted high school students from low-income families who attend partner schools in Mercer County, N.J. The goal of PUPP is to prepare students to be viable candidates for admission to and success at selective colleges and universities. Students take courses in art, writing, literature, math, physics, biology, social science and college-preparation skills, while also attending a leadership retreat at the Princeton-Blairstown Center, going on college tours and taking cultural excursions.

QUEST and CONNECT-ED will offer a two-week summer institute in science and mathematics for teachers of grades K-12. The institute is designed to enhance teachers' content knowledge and skills for inquiry-based teaching through hands-on experiments and discussion. This summer's professional development will include a field-based research project with Earthwatch, as well as campus-based seminars in astronomy and weather and climate.

Junior Summer Institute, June 18-Aug. 3
Thirty-three students, representing 30 colleges and universities throughout the United States and abroad, will participate in the Wilson School's 2012 Junior Summer Institute. Students come from 22 states and four countries — Bahrain, Mexico, Tanzania and Vietnam — and represent 26 undergraduate majors.

The program helps prepare students for graduate study and careers in public policy and international affairs by providing participants with the tools of critical thinking, speaking, writing, quantitative reasoning, and the skills and experiences necessary to create, analyze, implement, evaluate and affect policy in a multicultural, multiethnic society.

Coursework includes seven weeks of policy-related classroom instruction, including a policy workshop on either a domestic or international policy issue. As part of the program's culmination, students will present a comprehensive final report on a current policy issue that will encompass the skills and knowledge they have gained. The institute is one of four held at U.S. universities through the Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship Program, a national consortium of top graduate public policy and international affairs schools, that prepare college students for advanced degrees and careers serving the public good.

Santa Fe Indian School Leadership Institute’s Summer Policy Academy, June 18-22
This program provides high school Native Americans the opportunity to explore the current challenges and issues facing Native Americans and to examine how federal policies have an impact on tribal communities. Each year students are nominated to participate in the program by teachers, community leaders, professionals and tribal leaders. This year's participants come from the Pueblo, Navajo, Jicarilla Apache and Mescalero Apache nations of New Mexico.

Through roundtable discussions, case studies and presentations by Native American leaders and noted scholars, students will examine: Native American policymaking on the federal level and the current political climate; Native American education and the role of language and culture in education; indigenous research and policy implications; protection of natural resources and water rights; sacred sites protection policies; and economic development. The week will culminate in Washington, D.C., where students will present their findings and policy recommendations to the National Congress of American Indians, the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, the National Historic Trust and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Princeton alumna.